On the Town in London

By Kenneth M. Pierce

A garden party hosted by the Queen was laid on at Buckingham Palace. During opening ceremonies at Westminster Hall, Her Majesty's Scots Guards bandsmen drew in their breath and tootled out Chattanooga Choo Choo. Barristers at the Old Bailey blinked uncertainly at that strange foreign phrase, "Have a nice day." And London's Daily Mail marked the occasion by proclaiming, "The loudly checked leisure suit and dime-store cigar make a welcome return to the city." Ten thousand American lawyers, and nearly as many spouses, children and friends, were on the town in London, assembled in tax-deductible (maybe) pomp and plenitude for the 107th meeting of the American Bar Association.

Jamming the Savoy, the Ritz and 125 other London hotels, the crush of counselors all but took over the city. The sober Times pronounced it the largest group of one nationality ever "to attend an event, other than war, in another country." Londoners and regular tourists had to wait in line as lawyers festooned in white name tags filled restaurants, pubs and tour sites that A.B.A. members had booked long in advance. Popular West End productions such as Cats and Starlight Express were sold out, and reservations soared at Raymond's Revue Bar, a burlesque house whose newspaper ads promised A.B.A. lawyers "the greatest erotic entertainment in London." Tourism officials estimated that the visiting attorneys would spend $40 million on their six-day visit.

There was, take your seats please, actual convention business as well, and the hottest topic of the general sessions was international terrorism. In her keynote address at Royal Albert Hall, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spoke angrily of a newly "fashionable heresy," that "if you feel sufficiently strongly about some particular issue, be it nuclear weapons, racial discrimination or animal liberation, you are entitled to claim superiority to the law and are therefore absolved." Thatcher argued that terrorists were increasingly active, in part, because news attention encouraged them. The P.M. told the lawyers, to repeated applause, that reporters should voluntarily refrain from coverage that could boost terrorists' morale. In an obvious reference to last month's televised news conferences and interviews with American hostages in Beirut, Thatcher observed, "We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."

Two days later, at a news conference before addressing a luncheon session at Grosvenor House, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese picked up Thatcher's suggestion and said the Reagan Administration might soon begin discussions with the news media about whether their coverage of the hostage crisis was "helpful or hurtful from the standpoint of getting the crisis ended in a satisfactory manner." Meese carefully noted that the ability of the press to speak freely should be protected, but added, "There is an area of mutual good will on the part of the press and law enforcement authorities. There are areas where the press itself is not only willing but anxious to cooperate." Meese suggested the possibility of negotiated agreements with the Government "to delay the release of information which would be inimical to the peaceful or rapid solution of a particular operation, or perhaps temporarily to withhold information or even some interviews" that might endanger hostages. News organizations have sometimes voluntarily withheld such information, but CBS and NBC news chiefs were probably expressing the majority view in the media when they turned down Meese's proposed formal agreement.

The meeting also included 300 sessions on technical legal topics such as complex transnational litigation and judicial education. Some 20 tons Of legal material were printed for the event. Skeptical reporters saw some lawyers pick up attendance forms before meetings began and then depart for leisure activities. One delegate, when asked if he would attend the sessions, smiled and said: "For the sake of the Internal Revenue Service, my answer is yes." Attendance at overseas professional meetings is only tax deductible if the location can be justified and if conventiongoers actually do work that is relevant to their jobs. "England is the fountainhead of American law," observed Ernest Guy, who heads the A.B.A.'s meetings department and who apparently knows how to lay proper legal groundwork. Still, the A.B.A. was concerned that the festive and well-reported convention could lead to criticism of attorneys for dodging taxes. Shortly before the departure for London, in splendid lawyerly fashion, the organization asserted to members that it neither affirmed nor denied that the convention was a tax-deductible expense. --By Kenneth M. Pierce. Reported by John Wright/London

With reporting by Reported by John Wright/London